Interviews, articles, essays etc by Alan

Daily Prayer

Saturday, 20 April 2013

Terrence Malick: To The Wonder

The Guardian, in February this year reviewed Terrence Malick’s latest
film To The Wonder. Like his earlier
The Tree of Life it get’s mixed
reviews (a lot of reviewers strongly dislike it). I really appreciated The Tree of Life (see here), and so I’m looking forward to
seeing To the Wonder, as much for
it’s style – the way Malick structures his films; the way they work – as for
it’s content, and for the ways it explores some universal human themes.

Here’s how The Guardian reviewer
closed his review.

“…The
absence of God and the presence of love are the two poles of this created
world; a world perceived in a trance or delirium, and in which the problem of
God gives an inexpressibly painful kind of meaning to the immediate, agonised
problem of finding a complete knowledge of another human being. Both Paris and
the mid-American heartland look like something from another planet, something
witnessed, in delirious detail, under the influence of a powerful drug. There
is a rich excess in this movie, and the sensual profusion is not completely
absorbed into its texture. Yet only a film-maker as intelligent and idealistic
as Malick could have created this kind of surplus value…”

You can read the complete review here, and if you do so, there’s also an
8 minute filmed conversation about the film. See also Jonny Baker (here) who alerted me to the film. Thanks Jonny.

Comments

See also this 26th April 2013 article by Damon Linker -"Terrence Malick's moving Christian message — and film critics' failure to engage with it", but be aware there are "spoilers" if you haven't seen the film.